


A Day in the Life

by ShayneyL



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Dark, Episode: s07e12 Lineage, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 08:03:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20188978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShayneyL/pseuds/ShayneyL
Summary: A picnic on the holodeck.





	A Day in the Life

**Author's Note:**

> Writer's Month 2019, Day 10. The prompt is "dark AU."

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ: *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

Harry signaled at the door. "B'Elanna, are you ready?" he called. 

The door slid open. B'Elanna was standing there, dressed in her prettiest dress, hair and makeup perfect. "Where's Tom? And Dolly?" she asked, seeing that Harry was alone.

"They're waiting for us on the holodeck," Harry said. He held out his arm, and B'Elanna took it. 

Her red dress, Tom's favorite, hung loosely on her. Always slender, she was bone-thin now. He had to get her to eat more. "Tom wants to have a picnic," he told her.

When the holodeck doors slid open, they were on a wide beach. The sea, ruffled with foamy waves, and an impossibly blue sky seemed to go on forever. Seagulls cried in the distance. It was Point Reyes Beach, not far from San Francisco, where Tom had grown up. 

Tom was sitting on a blanket spread on the sand, unpacking a picnic basket. "Dolly!" he called. "Mom's here."

Dolly, who had been wading in the surf, came running up to hug B'Elanna. She was a coltish child, with her mother's delicate build, but tall for her age, like her father.

"Hi, Uncle Harry," she said. She had her father's pale slate eyes, and the flaxen hair blowing across her smooth forehead was the same color Tom's had been when he was a child.

"Hi, Dolly," Harry replied. 

B'Elanna had named her daughter Dolores. "Sorrows." It was an appropriate name. 

"Come on, let's eat," Tom said. 

They sat on the blanket. "Here, B'Elanna, this is yours. Extra paprika!" Tom handed his wife a plate full of fried chicken and potato salad. 

Harry accepted a plate as well. No extra paprika. It was holographic food, and he pretended to eat it. B'Elanna's was real, and he kept a careful eye on her, making sure she ate. 

Her appetite was pretty good today. She ate most of her lunch, and even had a few bites of the cherry pie Tom pressed on her afterwards. 

"I married an excellent cook," B'Elanna said, leaning over to kiss Tom. 

"Yes, you did," Tom agreed. 

In a different reality, Harry would have volunteered to take Dolly to see the lighthouse and given Tom and B'Elanna some alone time, but the scheduled holodeck time was running out. "B'Elanna," he said gently. "It's time to go."

"No," she protested. "We hardly have any time together."

"Your holodeck time is over. We have to go."

"No, no, no!" 

"End program," Harry said. The beach, the seagulls, Tom, Dolly, all vanished, replaced by the stark holodeck grid. Only he, B'Elanna, and the leftovers of B'Elanna's lunch remained. He knew from past experience that this was the only way to get her to leave the holodeck when she reacted like that, cruel as it was.

"No!" B'Elanna launched herself at him, landing a punch that split his lip before he got control of her. He wouldn't have had a chance a few years ago, but her weight loss had sapped a lot of her strength. 

"It's all right, B'Elanna. We'll come back tomorrow. I promise." 

A moment of lucidity seemed to come over her. She stopped struggling. "Why, Harry?" she asked, panting. "Why are you so nice to me? Why don't you hate me, like everyone else?"

"Nobody hates you." 

"I didn't mean to kill her," B'Elanna said. "I only wanted to fix her."

"I know," Harry said. He loosened his grip on her. It was a mistake. She got an arm free and punched him in the eye. Cursing, he got her under control again. Some days they could walk back together, but today wasn't one of those days. He beamed them both to her quarters, and let her go, half-expecting her to attack him again.

But she ignored him, instead going to her bed and picking up a worn, tattered toy. Toby the Targ. 

Harry went into the bathroom to wipe the blood off his face. He checked to see what supplies B'Elanna needed while he was there. She was running out of dental rinse and lipstick. He replicated replacements, and put them on the bathroom shelf. 

When he checked on her again, she was sitting on the floor, cradling the stuffed targ like a baby, rocking it and crooning to it. 

Harry sighed. He knew from past experience that this would go on for several hours, maybe all night. Quietly, he left, locking the door behind him.

* * *

"Again?" the Doctor said, running the scanner over Harry.

"I let my guard down," Harry said. "She's lost so much strength, I didn't expect her to fight so hard this time."

The Doctor pulled out a regenerator and began healing Harry's black eye. "I'm not sure these holodeck visits are good for her. Or you. You're giving her almost all your holodeck time."

"It's the only way to get her to eat," Harry said. "Maybe if we set up a hologrid in her quarters..."

The Doctor scowled. "Or we could force-feed her."

Harry dropped it. The general sentiment being what it was, diverting resources toward creating a personal holodeck for B'Elanna wasn't likely to garner much support from the senior staff, or the crew. He knew Tuvok visited her from time to time. Everyone else was more inclined to drop her off on a deserted M-class planet somewhere, and never look back.

Harry pitied her. What happened was a tragedy, but she hadn't meant to do it. She only wanted to make sure Tom didn't leave her, like her father had. She'd had to work quickly, and she was a brilliant engineer, but had no medical experience. The changes she made to the Doctor's program in order to get him to remove the Klingon DNA from her fetus created glitches. Fatal ones. The fetus ended up dying...and so did several crew members, injured in an unexpected attack by the Vaadwaur, and incorrectly treated by the Doctor. Among them, Tom Paris. B'Elanna's husband. It was almost enough to make Harry believe in karma. B'Elanna's desperate attempt to keep Tom with her ended up taking him away from her forever. 

The transporter system had been damaged, and Harry ended up bringing Tom down to sickbay from the bridge. B'Elanna was still there, recovering from her miscarriage. When she saw Tom, she had immediately confessed what she'd done, and tried to reverse the changes she had made to the Doctor's program. It was too late. Tom died in the surgical bay. B'Elanna's agonized shrieks haunted Harry's dreams. 

"I don't understand why you're doing this, Mr. Kim," the Doctor was saying. "Are you in love with her?"

"No," Harry said. Truth be told, part of him loathed her. He hated himself for it, but it was true. She was willing to mutilate her child to keep her man. And in the process, she killed his best friend. She hadn't meant to, but she'd done it. 

"Then why?"

"Because she used to be my friend. And..." Harry blinked back tears. "It's what Tom would have wanted."


End file.
